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Published July 20, 2011 | Accepted Version
Journal Article Open

Structural diversity of bacterial flagellar motors

Abstract

The bacterial flagellum is one of nature's most amazing and well-studied nanomachines. Its cell-wall-anchored motor uses chemical energy to rotate a microns-long filament and propel the bacterium towards nutrients and away from toxins. While much is known about flagellar motors from certain model organisms, their diversity across the bacterial kingdom is less well characterized, allowing the occasional misrepresentation of the motor as an invariant, ideal machine. Here, we present an electron cryotomographical survey of flagellar motor architectures throughout the Bacteria. While a conserved structural core was observed in all 11 bacteria imaged, surprisingly novel and divergent structures as well as different symmetries were observed surrounding the core. Correlating the motor structures with the presence and absence of particular motor genes in each organism suggested the locations of five proteins involved in the export apparatus including FliI, whose position below the C-ring was confirmed by imaging a deletion strain. The combination of conserved and specially-adapted structures seen here sheds light on how this complex protein nanomachine has evolved to meet the needs of different species.

Additional Information

© 2011 European Molecular Biology Organization. Received: 20 December 2010; accepted: 17 May 2011; published online: 14 June 2011. We thank Drs Jane H Ding and Alasdair McDowall for computational and EM support, respectively; Sarkis K Mazmanian for use of the microaerobic chamber; and Igor Antoshechkin for advice on genome assembly. This work was supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Cell Center and the National Science Foundation. Author contributions: GJJ designed the research; SC, MB, GEM, AB, ZL, JS, EIT, AM, JRL and MJD cultured cells and/or collected tomograms; SC averaged subtomograms with help from GEM; JRL and MB coordinated the sequencing and annotation of needed genomes, MB performed bioinformatics, and together with DRH identified export densities, including subtomogram averaging of the comparative wild-type and mutant C. jejuni motors; SC, MB and GJJ analysed the results and wrote the paper.

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August 22, 2023
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